25 Tricky Questions That Ask Candidates for Interviews at Microsoft
Microsoft - one of the world's largest technical companies, and many engineers (however, not only) from around the world would be happy to get a job there. Of course, this is not too simple - ordinary people do not take it. To demonstrate your own uncommonness, at the interview (if your skills and experience are relevant), you will have to answer a few non-standard questions. The publication Business Insider found on the portal Glassdoor, where employees share comprehensive impressions about different companies, 25 mini-tasks that candidates decided to interview at Microsoft.
So, what did the candidates ask for different positions?
1. "Think of a way to make sure that there is always milk in the fridge." (A question for the trainee for the summer.)
2. "Give us an example of a site with a great design." (A question to the expert in user experience.)
3. "How to determine whether a deck of cards is well or badly mixed?" (A question to the software engineer.)
4. "Why do not you join the Google team?" (A question to a senior business development manager.)
5. "Write a program that simulates writing an article for a magazine." (A question to the engineer-programmer.)
6. "What do you think about Microsoft's decision to launch Office products for the iPhone?" (A question to the leading specialist in business planning.)
7. "Why are the sewer hatches round?" (A question for the software developer.)
8. "How would you design a shuttle system to use it on the Microsoft campus?" (Question to the program manager.)
9. "The infamous question about the hands of the clock: how many times do the minute and hour hands" overlap "during the day?" (A question for the software developer.)
10. "Situation: your sales team made a mistake in working with an old client." How will you use your influence to improve the business?" (A question to a senior consultant.)
11. "How will you solve the problem of slow start on a computer / laptop?" (The question to the customer service specialist.)
12. "Explain to a five-year-old child what recursion is." (A question for the software developer.)
13. "Tell us how you would construct the airport." (Question to the program manager.)
14. "You are given time, how do you determine the angle between the hour and minute hand?" (A question for the software developer.)
15. "How do you form a relationship with team members who work in another country?" (A question to the leading administrator.)
16. "Create a GPS for a 16-year-old." (A question to the product manager.)
17. "Describe a difficult relationship with a colleague." (Question to the program manager.)
18. "Make a list of all the words used in the novel, as well as repetitions." (A question for the software developer.)
19. "If you were in the elevator with the CEO of the company, how would you tell about the cloud for a minute and a half?" (A question for the account manager.)
20. "You stand in a crowd." What will you do to stand out?" (Question to the site administrator.)
21. "Does your device have a stylus, how do you store it, how do you charge it? What other things can you use for this device?" (A question to the engineer-mechanic.)
22. "Create a research plan for the brand of a new wearable product." (A question for a specialist in research in design.)
23. "If you had a choice between two super abilities (invisibility and the ability to fly), what would you choose?" (A question to the leading product specialist.)
24. "The most unexpected was the question from a female manager who wanted me to share the sexist and misogynistic situations that took place in my last job. She asked me many questions on this topic." (Question to the program manager.)
25. "How would you help your grandmother if her computer broke down?" (A question to the support engineer.)
By the way, about the company Google, which was asked about a potential senior business development manager. As Laslo Bock, vice president of human resources, wrote in his book "The work of taxis", Google has already refused this approach (Microsoft, apparently, is also gradually moving away from strange questions). Bock called the puzzles meaningless: "The candidate can be faced with the following problem: "Your client is a producer of paper products. He is considering buying a second factory. Is it worth it to do this?" Or: "How many do you think the gas stations in Manhattan?" Or quite tricky: "How many golf balls fit in the Boeing 747?" and "If I reduce you to the size of a dime and put it in a blender, how can you get out?" With these kinds of questions, at best, you can identify a separate skill that can be improved by practice, but their usefulness in the overall evaluation of candidates tends to zero. In the worst case, the interviewer will rely on a very small amount of information or intuitive vision, voiced candidate, which will only give the first opportunity to feel a deep sense of satisfaction from his wit, but with their help it is hardly possible (if you can at all) to predict how good a candidate is for a particular vacancy. Partly this is due to a task that does not correspond to the situation (how many times during the working day do you have to estimate the number of gas stations?). In part because of the lack of correlation between the mobile intelligence (a good performance criterion) and intuition-like puzzles, and partly because there is no way to distinguish a person from an innate talent from someone who just trained one or another skill."